Various mechanisms exist for enabling virtualization on a platform. Virtualization Technology (VT) may be implemented in a variety of ways on platforms, for instance, available from Intel Corporation. VT enables hardware based virtualization of operating systems. One platform is implemented such that the architecture is split into two virtualized operating systems (OSs): a service OS (SOS) and a capability OS (COS).
The service OS may also be called a virtual appliance. The capability OS is analogous to the OS on a client on a platform, i.e., the user environment. One objective of this architecture is to remove several security functions from the purview of the user and move to a more protected area within the service OS. The service OS is put into line between the network and the user environment to provide the additional level of security.
In this particular VT model having a SOS and COS, the platform is limited to only one partition beyond the virtual appliance, or SOS, i.e., the COS. The SOS and COS may be the only partitions on this type of architecture. In this architecture, to maintain increased level of network message security, all of the network traffic is through the SOS.